From hungary-online-owner Sun Dec 10 18:52:44 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id SAA19413 for hungary-online-out31415; Sun, 10 Dec 1995 18:52:44 -0800 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id SAA19404; Sun, 10 Dec 1995 18:52:29 -0800 Received: from steve@isys.hu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online@hungary.yak.net (19402) Received: from kingzog.isys.hu (KingZog.iSYS.hu [194.24.160.4]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA19374 for ; Sun, 10 Dec 1995 18:51:28 -0800 Received: from [194.24.160.22] (bubba.iSYS.hu [194.24.160.22]) by kingzog.isys.hu (8.7.Beta.11/8.7.Beta.11) with SMTP id DAA17291 for ; Mon, 11 Dec 1995 03:50:45 +0100 (MET) X-Sender: steve@mail.isys.hu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 03:54:32 +0100 To: hungary-online@hungary.yak.net From: steve@isys.hu (Steven Carlson) Sender: owner-Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Hello Folks - This a very _long_ review of a book about arch-hacker Kevin Mitnick. It's worth a read, if you have the time. What the reviewer is saying is that Mitnick, the most-wanted-cybercriminal, is mostly a creation of NY Times reporter John Markoff - more hype than fact. =steve= -- Date: Sat, 9 Dec 1995 00:39:42 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt Subject: File 2--Review of Takedown The Mad-Scientist Myth Figure A circumlocuitous review of_Takedown_ by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff (Hyperion, $24.95) by Charles Platt Hardly anyone had heard of Kevin Mitnick before Katie Hafner and John Markoff wrote about him in _Cyberpunk._ Hafner now acknowledges that she was the one who gathered the data for that book, and its descriptions of Mitnick were mostly hers. In retrospect, she admits she characterized him unfairly. "It might have been a mistake to call him a darkside hacker," she told me during a telephone interview earlier this year. "Still, that's how you learn." Having benefited from her learning experience, she now seems sympathetic--almost motherly--toward the man she maligned. "I really think he is not darkside in the sense of being an electronic terrorist," she says. "He's not out to cripple the world. He isn't, he isn't! Saddam Hussein, or Hitler, they were out to cripple the world. There are malicious characters out there, but Kevin is not one of them. ... He has been turned into this bankable commodity. Leave the guy alone! He's had a really tragic life." How did her initial misconception come about? She says plaintively: "It was hard for me--since I hadn't spoken to him personally till after I wrote the book--to know what his motives were." Perhaps it seems strange that a journalist should defend herself by pleading ignorance of the subject that she chose to write about. Still, we should give Katie Hafner credit where it is due: she now seems genuinely repentant. The same can hardly be said for her ex-husband and ex- collaborator John Markoff, who must have made well over half a millions dollars by now, portraying Kevin Mitnick as an arch-enemy of techno-society. If Markoff regrets the "darkside hacker" label, he hasn't said much about it. * * * Unlike many hackers, Kevin Mitnick never looked for publicity. He felt he should be paid for giving interviews, and when Hafner and Markoff refused to come up with any money, he refused to talk to them. He became famous--or infamous--while doing his best to remain obscure. The key event that catalyzed this strange ascent to notoriety occurred on July 4th, 1994, when a story by John Markoff appeared on the front page of _The New York Times._ Headlined "Cyberspace's Most Wanted: Hacker Eludes F.B.I. Pursuit," the text described Mitnick as "one of the nation's most wanted computer criminals" and was accompanied with a suitably menacing mug shot. The story was liberally spiced with tidbits recycled from _Cyberpunk,_ but if you looked more closely, there wasn't any actual news. Mitnick had violated parole a year or so previously, had disappeared at that time, and hadn't been seen since. That was all. Why was this on the front page of a highly respected newspaper? Maybe because of the scary implications: that a weirdo who could paralyze vast computer networks was on the loose, and law enforcement had been too stupid to catch him. In reality, though, Mitnick has never been accused of willfully damaging any hardware or data, and has never been charged with making money from his hacking activities. Other computer criminals have been far more ambitious. In October, 1994, for instance, Ivey James Lay, a switch engineer for MCI in Charlotte, North Carolina, was charged with stealing more than 100,000 telephone calling-card numbers and disposing of them through a network of dealers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Spain, and Germany (according to the Secret Service). Allegedly the numbers were used to make $50 million in calls- -the largest theft of telephone service ever blamed on one person. Yet the story was summarized briefly in only a few newspapers. _Time_ magazine didn't even bother to mention it. Lay certainly didn't get _his_ picture on the front page of the _New York Times._ So why was Mitnick singled out for this honor? In _Cyberpunk,_ he was described as an omnipotent, obsessive-compulsive, egotistical, vindictive sociopath who used his computer to take revenge on the world that had spurned him. He later claimed (in _2600_ magazine) that this was "twenty percent fabricated and libelous." Maybe so, but the image of a petulant fat boy punishing his enemies via a computer keyboard was so memorable, it quickly displaced reality. He became the modern-day equivalent of a mad scientist, directly comparable with Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll, Wells's Dr. Moreau, or Verne's Captain Nemo. About 100 years ago, these brooding, solitary antiheroes roused a mixture of fright and fascination in readers who were scared by the emergent powers of science. Today, readers are just as nervous about the emergent powers of networked computers, and the myth of Mitnick provides the same kind of titillation. So far as I can discover, the FBI didn't classify Mitnick as one of America's most wanted; it was John Markoff who chose to apply that label. Markoff went far beyond the traditional function of a journalist who merely reports news; he helped to create a character, and the character himself became the news. Unfortunately for Mitnick, this made him the target of a hacker witch hunt. A few years ago, here in CuD, Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer published a short paper on this subject titled "(Witch)Hunting for the Computer Underground," in which they wrote that a witch hunt is "a form of scapegoating, in which public troubles are traced to and blamed on others. Although sometimes the others are guilty of some anti-social act, the response exceeds the harm of the act, and the targets are pursued not only for what they may have done, but also for the stigmatizing signs they bear." As I understnd it, this means that if someone looks like a hacker and smells like a hacker, the facts of his crime are secondary. He may have stolen a couple million from Citibank, or he may have merely trespassed into someone else's computer. It makes no difference; if he bears the hacker stigmata, he gets nailed. Which is precisely what happened to Mitnick. * * * He was finally caught in February, 1995, after a pursuit in which Markoff himself provided information to the FBI. This information probably wasn't worth much; Markoff told the feds that Mitnick could probably be found stuffing himself with junk food at the nearest Fatburger, whereas in fact Mitnick was working out regularly, had slimmed down to normal weight, and had become a vegetarian. Still, Markoff's unusually active participation in the case caused some cynics to suggest that he had followed a premeditated campaign, first exaggerating the Mitnick threat to make it more newsworthy, then helping to catch the hacker so he could write about it and make a bundle. Regardless of whether this was true, Markoff certainly showed no hesitation about cashing in. He wrote another front-page article for _The New York Times,_ then a long follow-up in the sunday edition--and then, of course, there was the much-publicized $750,000 deal for a new book to be written in collaboration with Tsutomu Shimomura, the "security expert" who had played a key role in catching Mitnick after Mitnick broke into Shimomura's computers at the end of 1994. John Markoff's precise motives remain a mystery. We can, however, learn something by examining his writing. In his _Times_ article describing Mitnick's capture, he stated that the hacker had been on a "long crime spree" during which he had managed to "vandalize government, corporate and university computer systems." These are interesting phrases. "Crime spree" suggests a wild cross-country caper involving robberies and maybe even a shoot-out. In reality, Mitnick seems to have spent most of his time hiding in an apartment, typing on a keyboard. The word "vandalize" implies that he wantonly wrecked some property; in reality, Mitnick caused no intentional damage to anyone or anything. I don't believe that these words were carelessly chosen. Markoff is a skillful writer. He addresses the reader with a tone of measured authority--yet at crucial points he lapses into the kind of innuendo normally reserved for tabloid journalism. This, I think, is the secret of his great success. His literate style, reinforced by the reputation of the _The New York Times,_ encourages readers to suspend their skepticism. The isolated nuggets of innuendo thus slip past unrecognized and are absorbed as if they are facts. This is an almost perfect way to circulate a false meme--such as the belief that Kevin Mitnick really _is_ one of America's most wanted computer criminals. The technique would be forgivable if Markoff buttressed his viewpoint with some objective sources. Objectivity, however, is not his strong suit. In his report of Mitnick's capture, he quoted a couple of sysadmins whose computers had been targeted by Mitnick in the past; naturally enough, they shared Markoff's critical viewpoint. He also quoted Assistant U.S. Attorney Kent Walker as saying that Mitnick "had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars. He was a very big threat." But this claim was never supported, and since Walker had helped run the investigation, he had an obvious interest in making the arrest seem as important as possible. When it came down to it, Markoff's journalism was long on opinion and short on facts. This was a formula that worked well for him in newspaper reports; but how would he be able sustain it throughout an entire new book? * * * I have a fantasy. In my fantasy, John Markoff bursts into a room where Tsutomu Shimomura sits as solemn as a zen master, peering impassively at a computer screen while he types a Perl script. "Tsutomu, I have good news and bad news!" Markoff exclaims. "The good news is, we sold the book rights for three-quarters of a million. The bad news is, I haven't got a clue what Mitnick was doing for the past two years. What the hell are we going to write about?" Shimomura doesn't even bother to look up. He gives a barely perceptible shrug and says, "Me, of course." I'm sure it didn't happen that way, but the end product makes it look as if it did. _Takedown_ isn't about Kevin Mitnick, because there was no way for Markoff to write such a book. Instead, it's an autobiographical account from Shimomura's point of view, describing in relentless detail the way in which Mitnick intruded into Shimomura's computers and the steps that Shimomura took to catch him. The book has one strong point: unlike Markoff's other work, it is rigorously factual. It may even be the most technically accurate popular book ever written on the subject of computers. Shimomura evidently took his collaborative role seriously, and he made his mark on this project. Of course, it's always nice to see someone get his facts right--but there is such a thing as _too many facts._ Do we really need to know the color of the cables in Shimomura's LAN? Do we need to know the _names_ he gave the computers in his bedroom (and why)? For that matter, do we really need to know that the bread sticks were stale in an Italian restaurant where he searched for healthy vegetarian food but was forced to eat a cheese sandwich? This book is a quagmire of trivia--but that's a secondary issue compared with its major problem, which is that it's written from the viewpoint of someone who is insufferably pompous and remarkably dull. Shimomura has a bad habit of flattering himself while demeaning the people he deals with. He was bored at Caltech; there was nothing exciting enough to be worthy of his time. He worked for the NSA but found the people "essentially inept." He had no respect, either, for critics who felt he shouldn't have sold his skills to that government agency; those critics didn't know what they were talking about. There's more--much more. Shimomura is scathing toward his assistant, a hapless graduate student whose errors are spelled out repeatedly in humiliating detail. He is disgusted by technical incompetence of staff at The Well. He scorns the abilities of other security experts, and is maddened by the slowness of the police. He even displays derision toward John Markoff at one point. And of course he has total contempt for Kevin Mitnick, whom he labels an "anklebiter." Mitnick grew up in a lower-class single-parent household and taught himself almost everything he knew about computers. At various times, Mitnick has made seemingly sincere attempts to find himself legitimate work in the computer field--until his reputation catches up with him. By comparison, Shimomura had many advantages that Mitnick lacked. His parents were scientists; they sent him to the best schools. Ultimately he found himself a secure niche in academia, and he enjoys a comfortable lifestyle staying in the homes of Silicon Valley millionaires, going away on skiing vacations, and doing the conference circuit. Shouldn't these advantages make it possible for Shimomura to be a little magnanimous toward his adversary? Alas, no. He constantly sneers and jeers at Mitnick. He claims that the hacker was "really more of a con man or a grifter than a hacker in the true sense of the word" and "didn't seem to be as brilliant a hacker as his legend claimed. ... he wasn't that clever and he was prone to mistakes." In which case, one has to wonder how he ever managed to crack the computer system maintained by such a world-famous "security expert." * * * _Takedown_ throws together a bizarre catalog of personal detail in an effort to make Shimomura seem less like a pompous disciplinarian and more like a regular guy. We learn that he used to wear roller blades at the San Diego supercomputer center, so he could move more speedily between his terminal and the printer. As a student he once destroyed his school's PA system by feeding house current into it. And then there was the time he crashed an ancient 14-inch IBM disk drive by telling it to seek past its final cylinder. These anecdotes from the life of a hardcore computer nerd are presented as if they're genuinely funny. Indeed, they're the high point of human interest. The low point comes when Shimomura goes into the most embarrassingly intimate details of his love life. Presumably because Markoff felt that some romantic interest would help to sell the story, this book contains revelations of a type normally reserved for Hollywood celebrities or British royalty. While he was pursuing Mitnick, Shimomura was also pursuing "Julia," the long-term girlfriend of John Gilmore, one of the first employees at Sun Microsystems in 1982 who subsequently co-founded the software corporation Cygnus. Without a hint of shame, Shimomura describes himself visiting Gilmore's home while Gilmore was out of town, staying as a guest, stripping naked, and soaking in the hot tub with Julia. He chronicles a whole series of seduction attempts, always sneaking away before Gilmore returns. And even though he is clearly trying to destroy someone else's long-term relationship, he maintains a plaintive, wounded tone, as if he expects us to share his pain. Clearly he feels that Julia should automatically prefer his company, and when she hesitates, this must mean there's something wrong with her. "I started to wonder," he says, "whether there was something self-destructive in her unwillingness to end her relationship with him." Kevin Mitnick begins to seem likable by comparison. At least he shows some irreverence, taunting Shimomura and trying to puncture his pomposity. At one point, Mitnick bundles up all the data he copied from Shimomura's computer and saves it onto the system at Netcom where he knows that Shimomura will find it. He names the file "japboy." At another point, in a private online communication (intercepted by Shimomura without any lawful authorization) Mitnick suggests to a hacker friend: "someone :-) needs to get to nytimes.com and create a story about japboy that he is a convicted child molester and get it printed with markoff's by line." Does Shimomura have any trouble maintaining his dignity in the face of these pranks? No trouble at all. He writes: "This was getting personal. ... none of us could believe how childish and inane it all sounded." Wounded dignity, in fact, seems the number-one reason why Shimomura put the rest of his life on hold, gave up a skiing vacation, interrupted his campaign to steal Gilmore's girlfriend, and started working 20-hour days to track down Kevin Mitnick. Clearly he was furious at Mitnick's invasion of his privacy. His tone of moral outrage reaches its crescendo when he sees Mitnick in court: "Having spent several weeks on this man's trail, seeing the damage he had caused, coming to learn that he was not only single-minded in his invasion of other people's privacy and his pursuit of their intellectual property, but also petty and vindictive, I knew one thing for certain about Kevin Mitnick: He was in no way the hero of a movie about some mistreated computer hacker whose only crime was curiosity. There was nothing heroic about reading other people's mail and stealing their software." Well, maybe so, but unlike Shimomura, Mitnick never claimed to be heroic. Nor did he cause any intentional "damage." Nor did he "attack," "pilfer," and "vandalize" computer systems, even though these words are used repeatedly throughout the book--in the same pejorative style that John Markoff previously perfected in _The New York Times._ * * * All the charges except one have been dropped against Kevin Mitnick. He may even be out of jail in time for the Markoff/Shimomura book tour. In other words, the man described in advance publicity for _Takedown_ as a threat to global civilization will be free to go about his business-- because, in the end, he wasn't much of a threat at all. Will this create an embarrassing schism between _Takedown_ and reality? Probably not. Reality has been at odds with the Mitnick myth for quite a while, but the myth is stronger than ever. During 1995, Mitnick's long-time friend "Roscoe" tried to sell his own book, telling the true Kevin Mitnick story. For one reason or another there were no takers. Here, then, was the final irony: book editors were not just willing to accept factual distortions, they actively prefered them. For most practical purposes, Kevin Mitnick no longer exists. He has been displaced by his own media image as a modern-day mad scientist. He is permanently imprinted with the hacker stigmata. And there's not a damned thing he can do about it. ------------------------------------------------------------- Portions of this article will appear, in a different form, in a book titled FEAR AND FREEDOM ON THE INTERNET, to be published in 1996 by HarperCollins. ------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------- Steven Carlson http://www.isys.hu iSYS Hungary info@isys.hu steve@isys.hu Hungary Online "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." 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